What happens in the video
“Poppy! Out of the way! I need the rake!” In a sunny garden, a white goat stands across the door of a wooden shed. A woman reaches for the latch. Poppy holds her ground. “Why are you being so stubborn?” the woman asks.
Then the tone changes. “Something’s burning in there!” A man comes around the shed. “I left the battery charger on!” The woman reaches toward him and the goat as they back away. “Keep back! We need the fire crew!” By the end the shed is still closed, and the woman is explaining, “The goat wouldn’t let me open it!”
Continuation:
The rake suddenly seemed like a ridiculous thing to have been in such a hurry for. Standing by the far gate while her brother called for help, Jo tried to remember why she’d wanted it. Leaves. She’d been determined to clear a handful of leaves before the judges arrived for the allotment competition.
Over the hedge, old Mr. Bell was still setting out his prize runner beans. “Could you move everybody back from the shed?” Jo called. He took one look at her face and abandoned the beans. Within a minute the competition judges, six gardeners and a lady carrying a remarkably flat sponge cake were all standing on the far side of the gate.
Poppy occupied herself by chewing the corner of an entry form.
The fire crew dealt with the smoking equipment. Later, when they were allowed back, Jo’s brother stood on the path with a sooty cardboard box of things they could salvage. He’d spent all morning teasing her about the rake. Now he kept saying, “I meant to go back and check.”
Jo took one end of the box. “I know. Come on, I can’t carry all your junk myself.”
Inside were a trowel with a split handle, a tin of mismatched screws and their father’s beat-up garden diary. Smoke had browned the page edges. Jo opened it to the first year they’d kept a goat. Beside a careful record of rainfall, their father had written, Poppy ate the peas. Must improve fence or acquire less ambitious goat.
Jo read it aloud. Her brother sat down on an overturned bucket and laughed until the awful morning finally released its grip on him.
They missed the judging. By evening, though, somebody had hung a homemade rosette on the far gate. FIRST PLACE FOR REFUSING TO BUDGE. Poppy had already eaten one of its paper tails. Jo took a picture of what remained and slipped a printed copy into the garden diary.
The following Saturday, Jo borrowed Mr. Bell’s rake and finished the patch by the shed. Poppy came over to supervise, resting her chin on the handle each time Jo paused.
“You could help,” Jo said.
Poppy selected one leaf from the newly finished pile and ate it. Jo left the rest where they were and went inside to put the kettle on.
